1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to the field of engineering design and analysis, and more particularly, to compare design parameters and capabilities among various proposed designs.
2. Background Information
Engineers and designers are often called upon to design and/or implement systems using combinations of existing technologies, varieties of which may be provided by various equipment manufacturers and/or vendors. Also, these systems may be compared to alternative systems designed by competitors attempting to secure contracts with potential customers. For example, network system engineers developing data network, video and voice designs for customers may perform a comparative analysis using various equipment manufacturers. Accordingly, the engineer may recreate parallel designs “from the ground up” using different manufacturer's components. Even then, the results obtained by the engineer are subjective with respect to comparing and contrasting the multiple designs, for example, based on the personal experience and knowledge of individual components. Further, the designs are not effectively analyzed as a whole in that the various features and functionalities of competing designs may not be evaluated on a solution level.
Accordingly, there is a need for efficient, objective and comprehensive comparison of possible engineering designs, for both element-by-element comparisons and holistic analyses.